The basic question remains a highly interesting one: What can a progressive company like Audi, or advanced architecture for that matter, achieve with regard to the future of mobility and cities? Now, the "Audi Urban Future Initiative", launched by Audi and once again curated by Stylepark, builds on the Award and delves deeper into the questions raised there in discussions, to develop new perspectives on the sustainable city of the future. The resulting findings are to be incorporated into Audi's work. At the center of this interdisciplinary exchange is the interaction of mobility, architecture and urban development.

Alongside the "Audi Urban Future Award 2010", for which five internationally renowned architecture teams designed visions for the city of the future, the "Audi Urban Future Summit 2011" also renders a contribution to an interdisciplinary, future-oriented form of cooperation. It involves architects, engineers, designers, strategists, scientists from the fields of sociology, economics and natural science plus experts from the specially established Audi Think Tank.

Saskia Sassen, sociologist and economist, who was chairperson of the jury at last year's Audi Urban Future Award, describes as follows the framework informing the debates on the future of urban mobility:

"It is clear that in the future too, we will need individual mobility. It is less clear what form this will take. I think we are heading towards a mobility space in which the automobile is a perfectly normal means of transport for people. Yet outside this space, we will need a ‘supercar': a car that produces the energy it consumes and can even make espresso."

www.audi-urban-future-initiative.com